Policy coherence and economic reforms in Central and Eastern Europe

Starting from the observation that some of the East European post-socialist governments produced coherent reform policies which successfully transformed their countries' economies into capitalist ones, while others lingered behind muddling through half hearted reforms, this paper takes a closer look at how these governments simultaneously developed the banking sector and the large scale privatization. The guiding question of the project is: Why do some governments of CEE produce coherent reforms of banking sector and large scale privatization, while others were less successful? In order to answer this question, the hor analyses the policies of the governments of the ten Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) between 1990 and 2004. The project starts from the assumption that governments caught in extended accountability networks and whose hority is constrained by other institutions are likely to produce coherent policies. It shows that the ability for producing coherent reforms is the result of a combination between the characteristics of governments and context conditions. In particular, it shows that the governments produced coherent reforms in presence of favourable combinations of contextual factors, even if their own characteristics are not facilitating the production of coherent policies.